The Recording Industry Association of America and its partners at the International Intellectual Property Alliance recently submitted their ‘piracy watchlist’ recommendations to the Office of the US Trade Representative. The RIAA pointed to two countries as being the worst of the worst when it comes to intellectual property theft: Spain and our comrades to the north - Canada.

This is particularly interesting because this week Spain passed a tough new law to combat piracy. The Sinde law (nicknamed for its sponsor) is aimed at shutting down file-sharing sites that traffic in illegal downloads. Even though the public and some in the Spanish movie industry opposed the law, it will become the rule of the land by summer, says TorrentFreak. But the RIAA claims this is just a baby step and that even more needs to be done to combat theft.

In their advice to the US Trade Representative, the groups included Spain in the Priority Watch List, the highest category for countries that are considered to be ‘piracy havens’. Spain is joined by Canada, Russia and China. All of these countries are considered major threats to the US entertainment industries.

These new recommendations from the RIAA will be considered by the USTR when it prepares its annual Special 301 Report. The report identifies countries that "obstruct or deny proper copyright enforcement." The RIAA recommended Spain because "file-sharing sites have been ruled as operating within the boundaries of the law."

“The sky-high Internet piracy levels in Spain can be attributed to government policies that have created an Internet-wide safe harbor for infringing activities. Spanish enforcement authorities have established the de facto decriminalization of illegal downloading of content distributed via P2P file-sharing,” the RIAA argues.

Another issue the RIAA wants addressed by Spain is the lack of ability to identify and report copyright infringers: "Spain’s laws fail to meet the minimum requirements of the EU E-Commerce Directive regarding liability for ISPs, or to establish the necessary tools to obtain the identity of the direct infringer," the group claims.

Canada is another candidate for the 2011 priority watch list, according to the RIAA, because of Canada’s slow progress on revising their copyright laws. The RIAA calls our neighbor to the north "home to some of the world’s most popular illegitimate Internet sites, including illegitimate P2P download and streaming sites."

The RIAA and IIPA recommendations include Canada, Spain and 11 other countries on the priority watch list of the 2011 Special 301 Report. We will see who makes the cut in a couple of weeks.

Comments

From my friends, family and myself, both here in Canada and in your own lands, we wish to tell you a great big f**k you. Kindly go die in a corner, your time has passed. You are neither a good defender for your industries nor a positive force for the consumers.

Having the RIAA saying to us "We're watching you, Canada" isn't scary, it's creepy. Like that old man in Family Guy.

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Living in Canada can be a very good thing, you know. We enjoy the universal healthcare and gun-free environment of an European country while getting all of our games released at the same time as in the US.

Living in Canada is awesome. We enjoy the universal healthcare and gun-free environment of a European country while getting all of our games released at the same time as the US.

"All of these countries are considered major threats to the US entertainment industries."

I find this unintentionally hilarious, because Hollywood went out of their way in the early days of film to keep Canada from building its own industry. In other countries, national cinema accounts for as much as 20% of the screentime; up here it's something like 5%. But now, with their economy in a nosedive, they're scared to death that more and more upstart production companies will move up here to shoot in Calgary and Toronto.

Indeed. Fortunately, our politicians are at least on record as saying that they basically ignore the US 301 list because it's made up by Big Content themselves. The current copyright bill on the table in Canada will likely die if we end up in a federal election in the spring (again), but we're making much better progress towards a balanced bill.

Haha, I remember the Progressive Conservative response to Canada being added to the list. It translated into a very polite "Screw you". Then they bumped up funding to filming done in Canada and turned away the idea of charging people a fee on all recordable media (including MP3 players, USB memory, hard drives, etc).

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm